Italy Earthquake: What The Italian Tech Community Is Doing

There's a "bad" Italy and a "good" Italy, as former Economist editor-in-chief Bill Emmott would say. Disasters like the recent earthquake are litmus tests of sort to highlight the difference between the two.

The former does not comply with its own anti-seismic standards, tries to skim money off the reconstruction budget (it happened in the past, and officials are scared that it will happen this time as well), loses time and money quibbling over insignificant details. The latter rolls up her sleeves, and tries to help.

The level of solidarity witnessed in the first days after the emergency was refreshing: all over the country, people lined up to donate blood, sent money through
SMS, collected clothes and food for the displaced.

The tech community, telecom operators and media also joined forces to support the victims. The crowfunding campaign "Un aiuto subito" launched on Friday by the TV network La7 together with the daily Il Corriere della Sera, TIM and the startup Starteed, raised more than $150,000 in less than 24 hours and that figure has now jumped to $200,000 and counting.

"The level of participation is unprecedented, but the campaign has no limit, there's no fixed target to be reached and each single euro will be channelled into activities meant to rescue and support the people hit by the earthquake," the organizers said in a blog post.

Other forms of support were not money-related, but meant to improve communications.

The Italian community of OpenStreetMap, an open source alternative to
Google Maps, also mobilized to update the maps of the areas damaged by the earthquake, using satellite imagery made available by Bing, by the European program Copernicus and by the Lazio region (the most affected by the disaster).

Having fresh information about the location of first aid centers, closed roads and collapsed buildings could help rescuers effectively deal with the emergency.

The independent project Terremoto Centro Italia also compared the situation before and after the earthquake using satellite imagery, while at the same time using a Telegram channel to provide updates.

Images of Amatrice before and after the event. Image credits: Terremoto Centro Italia

As it happened during other tragic events, social media also played a role. People expressed their solidarity through the #prayforitaly or #terremoto hashtags, tweeted the banking account details of the Red Cross and the numbers to call in order to receive support.
Facebook activated its Safety Check feature.

However, the calamity also showed once more the dark side of social networks: viral disinformation, hate speech propagation (with some people and some newspapers complaining that Italians had to sleep in tents, after the earthquake, while some foreign refugees in the past stayed in hotels).

Other foreign refugees actually volunteered to help the victims of the disgrace, but this doesn't seem to count, for critics. A reminder that 'bad' Italy is always there, lurking in the shadows, even when the 'good' one shines at its the best.